Useless gifts are 'under the scanner' in Wedding Wishlist's new campaign

The video has been created in association with the agency What’s Your ProblemETBrandEquity | July 12, 2016, 16:18 IST

Picture credits: YouTube videoNewly launched, Wedding Wishlist is a portal that allows prospective couples to share a list of desired wedding gifts with their guests and receive the gifts they truly need.

It all began when Kanika Subbiah, CEO and Founder of Wedding Wishlist was in a conversation with a frustrated friend. Frustrated because she had received a pile of useless gifts at her wedding. "Too big, too garish, too...everything", said the friend, sighing at the weight of the useless wedding gifts in her arms. The couple only chose four gifts out of the 200 odd gifts they received. But they ended up writing 200 thank you notes for the guests and shopping for items to set up their new house.

"Every day in India, thousands of married couples receive unnecessary gifts at their nuptials. Most of these gifts join the recycle pile that every Indian home has or lie unused at the back of someone's closet", said Kanika. To find a solution to this problem and bridge the gift divide - the immense gap between gifts received and gifts desired, Kanika launched the web portal Wedding Wishlist in February 2016.

Wedding Wishlist in association with their creative agency WYP Brand Solutions Pvt. Ltd. recently launched their first digital film and content, which was created out of an activation program cum social experiment.

'Wedding gift scanners' were placed at select weddings. These scanners were x-ray machines, the kind you see at airport security, where the gifts had to be kept on a belt and then scanned. These were manned by 'Wedding Gift Inspectors' who checked the quality of each gift and marked the gifts against the entering guests.

"This is not a typical ad film, it's a social experiment and activation which doubles up as content and a digital video. And it makes the point in a very real yet entertaining way. The wedding wishlist is a new but much needed concept in India. And therefore it was important that we introduced it in an attention grabbing way," explained Amit Akali, Managing Director and Creative Head, What's Your Problem.

When guests understood that their gifts were actually being checked for quality they were shocked. Some resisted the checking, most were surprised but relented, some found it rude. At which point the 'Wedding Gift Inspectors' revealed that this was all a joke, that they were actors and that there were hidden cameras capturing it all.

Huzefa Roowala, Director - Content and Creative, What's Your Problem added, "We wanted to deliver the proposition of Wedding Wishlist - Useless wedding gifting habit in a unique, fun way that made the prospective clients experience the need first hand. So we created a social experiment in the form of an activation. To pull this off in real time we worked with Baraka Productions -Nishant Nayak and Mithun Gangopadhyay, who have worked on reality shows like 'Bakra' and Date Trap." Watch video here